


What was it like?

by Kafoomph



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Aliens, Backstory, Gen, suggestion of rape/violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 02:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kafoomph/pseuds/Kafoomph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One simple question about their past spawns two completely different answers as Strife and Xephos give their impressions of the homeworld they left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What was it like?

**Author's Note:**

> This might be a little confusing as I switch conversations without much of a warning. Hopefully it's still readable.  
> This is just an idea that got stuck in my head. Hope you enjoy.

“What was it like?”

Strife looked up from his machine to see that Parvis had just invited himself in, again, and had tracked mud in all over the recently re-laid floor, again. Not that he was complaining. The machine he was working on just seemed to be having a hissy fit and didn’t want to work today. Considering he’d spent all morning trying to get the damn thing to run he figured he probably deserved a break.

“Hello Parvis, please tell me you didn’t take a shortcut through my sunflowers again.”, he indicated to the muddy tracks. Parv, as was Parv’s way, didn’t seem to be listening. After a short heartbeat of silence, which Strife used to hastily wipe off the oil on his hands, he started to walk towards his food store with a questioning, “Lunch?”, thrown over his shoulder. Parv followed but still seemed lost in thought.

“You didn’t answer me.”, Parv finally said, accepting whatever food Strife passed his way. “What was it like?”  
Strife’s brow furrowed as he tried to think what Parvis could be referring to. With a confused look he grunted out a querying, “Huh?”, and bit into the apple he was holding. Parvis rolled his eyes like something out of a cartoon and indignantly squeaked, “On your home planet dummy! What was it like?”

 

“Oh.”, Xephos exhaled, turning to face Lalna fully. He’d expected this question months ago when Lalna and Honeydew first found out he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t asked then and in honesty it kind of slipped his mind.

“You don’t need to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”, Lalna backtracked. “I was just curious.” Xephos looked at the scientist, rubbing the back of his head while he stared at his shoes like a scolded child.

“It’s alright friend.”, Xephos reassured. “My home planet was beautiful, and it’s hard to describe to someone who’s not seen it. Our trees were made of a substance similar to what glass is on this planet, except it could grow and mold itself. Equally it could be cut and processed much like wood can, but it never seemed to splinter like wood. It would always revert back to a smooth state. It’s leaves where soft like silk, and on a good day you could see the light that the leaves captured thrumming through the trunk. Our lakes would sparkle with starlight, always illuminated, so much so that we often build our roads to follow the riverflow.“

“It sounds beautiful.”, Lalna said, while thinking that it also sounded a little poncey at the same time. Still, he’d never admit it to Xephos.

 

“The cities were large bustling places where the tallest and most important buildings where built in the finest materials that could be bought. Golds, silvers and marbles made up the most illustrious buildings. The workhouses where often made of granite and stone, where people were packed in and assigned a station. Your station was where you worked, ate, slept- lived really.” During his explaination, Strife had begun to nervously fidget with the rings he kept on his fingers. Parv was silently taking everything in, not daring to interrupt lest Strife stop in his tale. “Once you were in a workhouse you were expected to stay there. When you came of age you were given the opportunity to apply for colleges and education, but it was a lip service, to show that they were being fair. After all, it wasn’t the house master’s fault his workforce wasn’t educated, if they didn’t have enough time to be taught after they’d finished their work it was their fault for not being efficient enough.”

At this, Parvis had to ask, “But you went to college, didn’t you? You managed to get out of the workhouses, you went to college with Xephos.” Strife nodded.

“The house master was bound by social obligation. I passed the entrance exams, to everyone’s surprise. I must have been the first work house scholarship in over fifty years. To ensure no one else got the bright idea to follow my lead, he killed my family the day I was leaving, and announced that the work day was to be extended by an extra five hours. I heard a couple of other workhouses did the same, just in case.”

 

“So you have no family there?”, Lalna asked, having found the discussion of the cities interesting for all of five minutes. He hadn’t expected Xephos to go into so much detail.

Xephos shook his head. “No, I was an only child so when my parents passed...” He shrugged it off. “I was just starting college anyway at that point, and a whole new world was opening up to me. I missed them, naturally, but they wouldn’t have wanted me to mope.”

“What was your college like?”, Lalna asked, trying to imagine the education offered to an alien race.  
Xephos laughed a little, recognising the look of fantasy on Lalna’s face. He felt only slightly awful to burst his friend’s bubble.  
“I’m afraid it wasn’t much different to your human colleges. You went to classes, ate lunch, had after class clubs you could join and crashed out in the dorms. Nothing special.”  
“And that’s where you met Sjin and Strife?”, Lalna asked, now only mildly curious.  
Xephos grinned, lost to a memory. “Yeah, me and Sjin had the same botany club, it was surprisingly fun for just digging around in dirt. Mostly because we spent the time learning how to brew our own alcohol- the club wasn’t heavily monitored.”  
“So you can brew space cider?”, Lalna perked up. Grinning in response Xephos nodded, before continuing to reminisce.  
“I’d never met an orange before, so it was great to just chat and see how differently we grew up over some home brewed gins, or whatever it was we’d decided to class what we’d made that night.”

 

“What do you mean by that?”, Parvis asked, latching on to part of Strife’s college stories that didn’t quite add up.  
Strife exhaled, wondering how best to explain it. “I was a green. I wasn’t expected to do well. I wasn’t expected to last one year, let alone five.”  
“What do you mean by a green?”, Parvis pushed. Will blinked, surprised by the question.  
“You’ve seen me glow before.”, Will stated, a confused edge to his voice. “I glow green. It’s my colour, my assignment.”  
Parv hummed, wanting to argue with that statement but was more concerned with other pressing thoughts. “So you were segregated, by colour?”  
“It was a common thing on my planet.”, he spoke in a defensive tone before sighing. “ Golds and silvers where of high and noble birth, they certainly couldn’t be the workforce. Naval blues were the military command, with lighter blues acting as tacticians in other aspects of business or politics, oranges were the friendly faces that ran for office or sold you products that you rarely needed. Purples are the scientists, the thinkers, the artists. Pinks are the artisans and the small family business owners. Greens are the cannon fodder, the workforce, the labourers. It was the way things were.”, Strife said, a detached sort of bitterness seeping through his tone.  
“But you broke those conventions.”, Parv pointed out. “You went to college.”  
“At a cost though Parvis. It cost me a great deal, and I was never accepted despite any of it.”

 

“Yeah, Strife was kind of an anomaly”, Xephos responded to Lalna’s questioning. “I’m afraid I don’t know much of the story behind it. Green’s are rare, he’s the only one I’ve ever seen.”  
“Huh.” Lalna rubbed at the tuft of hair that grew out of his chin. “What about reds? You didn’t mention them.”  
“Reds are dangerous.”, Xephos said, stiffening. “Thankfully they’re confined from birth but occasionally one can escape.”  
“That sounds a bit harsh.”  
“Lalna, they’re like animals. Violent and murderous. They don’t care who or what they hurt, they just go on rampages. They’ve mostly died out anyway, there’s no point thinking about them.”  
“Mostly?”  
“A couple are kept, to see if we can calm them down, make them less violent. But once a colour’s set, the colour’s set.”  
“And how long does a colour take to set?”  
“It sets a day after the birth.”  
“And their colour determines their personality, their live as it were?”  
“Yes.”  
“So how come Strife went to college with you, if he was only a green?”  
“I told you. Strife is kind of an anomaly.”  
“Did he change colour perhaps?”  
Xephos shook his head. “You can’t change you’re colour, at least not to a different one entirely- he would have always been some form of green, just with yellow or blue tendancies.”

 

“But I’ve seen you change colour.”, Parv insisted.  
“Parv. Drop it.”  
“No. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you glow green, and blue and orange and red. You can change your colour.”  
Strife regarded him with a look of horror. “Parvis. You cannot repeat what you’ve just said to anyone. I need you to promise me that what you just said will not go any further than these walls.”  
“But.”  
“Parv, promise me.”  
“I don’t know that I can.” Strife stared at him, bile rising in the back of his throat. “I was speaking to Kirin who asked if you could only glow green. I told him that I’d seen you glow other colours.”  
“Did you specifically mention the red?”, Strife asked, his calm tone not betraying the panic he felt.  
“No. I mentioned I’d see you go blue.”  
Strife slumped against the wall. “Red’s are not looked well upon in my society.”, Strife admitted. “My ability to change my colour was a mutation in my genome. People of one colour don’t often breed of people with another colour, there’s too many unknowns. That didn’t bother my parents.”  
Parv regarded the other man as he was lost in thought, a small but warm smile threatening to show its presence. He asked Strife softly, “What happened at your parents farm?” Strife looked at him then looked at his shoes, biting the inside of his cheek.  
“We were raided, the militia saw fit to stick their nose in where it didn’t belong. My father executed on the spot for being a red. For being a danger to the society despite the fact we were miles away from civilisation and that he, he...” Strife floundered for his words, a gentle plea for understanding running through them. “He wasn’t a violent man. He rarely even raised his voice, even when I let all the poultry loose to go on a ‘wild goose chase’. He was kind, and gentle. And they killed him, for nothing.”

 

“...for the safety of everybody. Imagine, a young family being held at the mercy of such a depraved individual. Naturally the mother was very relieved, but according to my uncle she didn’t survive for much longer after.”  
“How come?”, Lalna quizzed, finding this whole social dynamic sort of odd.  
“From her injuries.”, Xephos nodded without actually going into any detail. “It was a real shame, apparently she was a white. They’re something else altogether.”  
Lalna just looked over him, waiting for the spaceman to continue.  
“They’re above royalty, they’re divine. There’s supposedly only one born every hundred years or so.”  
“Oh?”  
“Our society worships light, the colour’s that we produce are a show of belief and respect for the old gods. White is the purest light, so whites are the purest beings. Not that having a colour is a bad thing, most sources of light have a colour coming from it.”  
“So... I thought you said you didn’t have any family on the planet, what happened to your uncle that found the white?”

 

“I killed him.”, Strife admitted, his voice and hands tremoring slightly. “He didn’t deserve to live with the satisfaction of what he’d done.” His well trimmed nails dug into his palms as he recalled what he had done. “I. I lost all colour when I heard my mom screaming, and when that happened their cells, their prison couldn’t hold me. I slaughtered them all for just standing by and letting it happen. According to their records we’d all died from supposed injuries that my father was to have inflicted on us. They weren’t going to let us live and it certainly read like they were going to have fun with us first. I figured I’d give them a taste of their own medicine.”  
Parv stood frozen, his hand over his mouth as he tried to fight the feeling of nausea that was welling up inside. “You must have only been a child.”, he realised aloud. Strife nodded grimly.  
“When they were dead I took what was left of my family out of the cells. My grandparents backed me up when I was trying to convince my sisters not to go looking for our mother. My younger brother, I think he was scared of me. Blacks, like whites, are something of a thing of legend in that culture. They are always depicted as the keepers of the dead. They provide the shadows for the light. It’s all very unnecessary really, colours don’t actually indicate anything, other than possibly genetics and even then there are mutations. It’s a faulty belief system but one that they’ll never change because it benefits the few with power.”  
“Your homeworld sounds really corrupt.”, Parv finally said, massively understating what he wanted to actually say.

 

“You have to admit Xephos, separation by colour, to the point of imprisonment from birth does sound really wrong.”, Lalna tried to point out, hoping not to offend his friend.  
“It does when you say it like that. But can you see that by imprisoning red’s we keep the population safe? It’s something that’s kind of wrong that’s done with the best of intentions.”  
“Like the experiments in Yoglabs?”, Lalna asked, not really convinced but he didn’t really want to try talking about it either.  
“Now you’ve got it!”, Xephos grinned like a proud parent who’s kid finally understood their homework. “Speaking of, I should really get back to the lab...”  
“Don’t let me hold you up.”, Lalna smiled back, feeling just the tiniest bit patronised. “I think I’ll check in on Cluckyduck. Before you go though Xeph, now that we've been working on spaceships and stuff, would you ever go back home?”

 

“No.” Strife said automatically. “I can’t change anything there Parv, and to go back would possibly end me back up in a workhouse. Besides, this is more my home than that planet ever was.”  
“You’d miss me.”, Parvis declared, grinning manically before speaking in his baby voice. “You’d miss your lil’ Parvy-warvy.”  
“No. No Parv I wouldn’t especially when you use that voice.”, Strife deadpanned. Of course that just made Parv do it more.  
“You would! Oh why won’t you admit you’d miss me Strifeykins.”, he pouted.  
“Fuck off.”, Strife laughed, haphazardly shoving his friend. Parv hit the floor with a very definite ‘thud’ and there was a pause before the two men dissolved into giggles. Strife offered a hand to Parv who was still intently giggling. Once they were both standing Parv grinned at Strife and said, “Oh yeah, I came round to ask if you’d help me in this dungeon I found. It has cool loots.”  
“Okay, let me grab my gear.”

 

“I dunno. Probably not.”, Xephos said after thinking about it for a while. “I miss my home planet but I have a home here you know. This place isn’t as rigid as back home either. And I’d hate to leave you and ‘Dew behind.”  
Lalna shook his head at the spaceman and laughed. “You’re such a sap Xephos. Enjoy the labwork.”  
Xephos grinned and waved Lalna off. “Have fun playing with the ducks!” , he called over his shoulder. His head full of ideas for the lab and a couple of thoughts of home.

 

BONUS

“Hey Sjin, what was it like?”  
“What was what like? What was it like on my homeplanet?”, Sjin said as he browsed his second inventory.  
“No, you big dum dum.”, Sips drawled sarcastically. “What was it like to find your mum on Redtube?”  
“Oh, oh that.”, Sjin giggled in a faux-nervousness. “Well it was kind of awkward at first cause I was watching 50 Shades of Grey parodies with my dad, but he was alright with it when he realised it wasn’t the one he was in.”  
“Oh yeah. It must get awkward watching films with your dad when he’s Sylvester Stallone.”  
“Yeah it can be, but as long as we stay away from films he’s in we’re alright.”  
“So does that mean you’ve never seen the Expungables? Or Timecop? Man you’re missing out!”  
“I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them. Just not watched them with my dad.”  
“Hey Sjin, come look at this...”

*continued sounds of lego talk fade off into the sunset*

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you all enjoyed the bonus lego talk too ^_^
> 
> Comments and feedback are always appreciated.


End file.
